This is a well written but overly constructed and meta financial comedy about a the life and times of a youngman who works in financial firm that is going to have a hard time finding it's audience because the vast majority are going to have their eyes glaze over.
The problem here is the script. It's well written, and while nominally the focus of film is the characters, it is so full of financial terms that it becomes over whelming. We think that the terms are more important than they are and we lose sight of the characters. Yes, I completely understand that this is the world but the terms are being tossed around so fast and furious I don't know what the hell they were talking about. Since I don't know what they are talking about I stopped caring. Where films like MARGIN CALL and THE BIG SHORT ease us in and let us catch up and attach to the characters, here we never quite do.
Another problem with the film is the meta construction. Having Bobby Sanders talk at us makes the film feel less than it is. The film feels like a riff of THE WOLF OF WALL STREET and other Scorsese films (in a weird way I kept thinking the opening of GOODFELLAS). Additionally the meta nature reduces all of the characters are reduced to cartoons (a problem with WOLF that most people overlook). You laugh at the jokes and dialog (which is excellent) but you really don't care.
This is a miss.
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